Synesthesia

The rare condition mirror-touch synesthesia causes Dr. Joel Salinas to experience other people’s emotions and sensations. Is it a superpower or a curse, asks Pacific Standard: No one, it seemed, knew what…

Artist Melissa S. McCracken has synesthesia, a phenomena in which sounds, mathematical numbers, and other abstract concepts evoke specific colors. Because McCracken finds it frustrating trying to describe the phenomenon, she has decided to…

Hopefully additional synesthetic devices such as smell-o-vision spectacles are in the pipeline as well. New Scientist writes: If you can hear, you probably take sound for granted. Without thinking, we swing our…

Researchers in Spain have found that at least some of the individuals claiming to see the so-called aura of people actually have the neuropsychological phenomenon known as “synesthesia” (specifically, “emotional synesthesia”). This might be a scientific explanation of their alleged ability.

In synesthetes, the brain regions responsible for the processing of each type of sensory stimuli are intensely interconnected. Synesthetes can see or taste a sound, feel a taste, or associate people or letters with a particular color.

The study was conducted by the University of Granada Department of Experimental Psychology Óscar Iborra, Luis Pastor and Emilio Gómez Milán, and has been published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. This is the first time that a scientific explanation has been provided for the esoteric phenomenon of the aura, a supposed energy field of luminous radiation surrounding a person as a halo, which is imperceptible to most human beings…